Bob Woodward reported that President Obama has scheduled five extensive meetings with the NSC (National Security Council) and field commanders to rethink and reexamine their Afghanistan strategy over the next couple weeks. These meetings follow closely on the heels of a 66 page report from his commanding general, recommending that we execute a “surge” of troops, and vamp-up counterinsurgency tactics.
I am hesitant to support a surge in Afghanistan for several reasons that I feel should be pretty obvious.
1) We are already really in debt, and further action in Afghanistan would significantly add to the deficit, more than the proposed health care bill ever would.
2) We have had troops on the ground there for 8 years, and have been fighting two wars in the region for 6. Thousands of our soldiers have been killed, not to mention countless civilians.
However, there are also some very compelling reasons for staying. Among these is the fact that we do not want Afghanistan to turn back into the cesspool that it was--and for the most part still is--before we were attacked back in 2001. Furthermore, in addition to our national security interests, some would argue that we have a moral responsibility to help Afghanistan. We spent $1 billion pouring weaponry into Afghanistan in the early 80’s, and afterwards did nothing to help them build schools or infrastructure. We turned a country filled with tribal violence into a heavily-armed country of tribal violence and then washed our hands of the whole thing! Whatever we do, we need to make sure that when we leave Afghanistan, terrorist training camps don’t spring up in our place.
-Riley G.
Tuesday Late Night Open Thread
1 hour ago
5 comments:
I definitely agree with your hesitation. We can't afford a surge in Afganistan; it's just horrible timing and I feel like it isn't in our best interest.
Riley-
I agree with your hesitation as well. I know we can't afford a surge in Afghanistan, but I also feel like it's obvious we have to do something. After all, Afghanistan is where most of the terrorist threat is coming from (I think? I could be wrong on this...)
I also agree with what you said about how we supported Afghanistan with weaponry in the early 80's--" then washed our hands of the whole thing!" I feel like some of the violence of Afghanistan can be traced back to this, and it is partly our responsibility.
-Katie Jensen
From my understanding of the Afghanistan situation, we need to put more troops in there. Unfortunately, we don't have the money, but its a problem that needs to be solved. Underfunding something won't get rid of the problem. If we put adequate resources in sooner, we can hopefully pull out our troops sooner. In Iraq we hesistated to put in more troops, but after the surge we were more successful and are now looking to end our military involvement in Iraq in the next few years.
-Derek White
Adding to my previous comment, Obama can't just ignore the war. But we do have to acknowledge that our commitment in Afghanistan cannot be indefinite as US troops and dollars is finite.
i kinda think we should send more troops to afghanistan because we were a major cause in the problems in those countries.
- i can side with sending more troops because if we want to end this war we might as well do it correctly if that means sending more troops so be it.
but only problem were in major debt so we cannot fund this kind or operation.
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